Agriculture committee  I'm conspicuous by my absence. There is no question, I think, of our going the direction of less stringent regulations. We recognize that these regulations are important. They're important for the security of Canadians, and the benefit does accrue to Canadians. If we were to

Agriculture committee  Do you mean other than what's suggested, for example, in the retail approach? We welcome any assistance from government at this point. We all want to deal with this from a standpoint of being proactive, as opposed to being after the fact reactive if, God forbid, an event were t

Public Safety committee  Please, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much.

Public Safety committee  With me is Mr. Jeff Kisiloski, our assistant director of technical affairs. Our office is out of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and committee members. I appreciate the invitation to be here today. The Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers represents nearly

Public Safety committee  Perhaps I'll start, but I'm sure that Jeff has recollections as well, and he can sort of support any comments that I might miss. We brought this matter to the attention of several members of Parliament last November, in what we call the CAAR annual parliamentary forum. Unfortuna

Public Safety committee  Per site, and if you multiply that by 1,500 sites—But then we did a statistical analysis to say that not all sites are going to require a full upgrade; some have existing infrastructure in place. So our statistical sort of bell curving suggested an average of $124,000 per site.

Public Safety committee  In terms of the Explosives Act, ammonium nitrate being an explosive precursor would fall under the Explosives Act; hydrous ammonia, however, tends to come under Transport; crystal meth issues tend to come under Health; obviously terrorist activity comes under Public Safety; and t

Public Safety committee  Are you referring to perhaps more organic methods of farming versus conventional methods?

Public Safety committee  I think it's up for debate and still rather contentious as to whether organic products are more tasteful, more healthy, and necessarily more beneficial for Canadians. From a price standpoint, of our disposable incomes, Canadians only have to pay 10% of their disposable incomes on

Public Safety committee  Absolutely.

Public Safety committee  We believe there should be a shared responsibility. I think there is a cost of doing business, there's no question, to secure these products, and that also benefits the employees and the workers in terms of safety. It keeps our costs down and costs of operation for insurance purp

Public Safety committee  I'll just summarize. The piece in front of you that you received from the clerk prior to my verbal presentation outlined a few other areas that we did not directly address in our initial comments. There are additional costs—for example, the anhydrous ammonia nurse tanks requiring

Public Safety committee  The United States is the first country you could draw attention to. Currently, the agri-retail facilities in the U.S. have just completed a phase of risk assessment analysis where they had to submit paperwork that was due June 7 to the Department of Homeland Security. The homelan

Public Safety committee  We are. The United States and Canada are certainly in the lead. Other countries that compete with us agriculturally—South America, certainly Brazil and Argentina, China, and India—are nowhere near as potentially secure as we are, but that also introduces some degree of competit

Public Safety committee  They're taking the lead to do the risk assessment.